Virtual viewing service is booming
Recently, livestreaming to sell products on platforms such as Facebook, TikTok... has become a trend. Since then, many KOLs and KOCs (influencers) have specialized in organizing livestreaming sessions to sell products on these platforms with advertised revenue figures of tens of billions, even hundreds of billions of VND.
The number of views displayed on the livestream sessions also ranges from tens of thousands to even hundreds of thousands and lasts for many hours. From there, the service of selling virtual views to watch livestreams on this platform has also flourished with a series of service providers being formed.
As a new person building a sales channel on TikTok, we contacted a unit specializing in providing virtual viewership buying services for livestreaming. This side said that the service has 3 packages: Package 220, Package 221 and Package 360, equivalent to the price of 20 VND, 30 VND and 45 VND for each viewer, respectively. Customers must buy a minimum of 100 viewers and a maximum of 100,000 viewers at the same time. The way to calculate the price of increasing livestream viewers on TikTok is: Total price = Number of viewers x viewing duration (minutes) x unit price per viewer.
The service provider promises that in case the viewership drops or does not increase within the first 5 minutes of the livestream, the customer will be compensated. Notably, the customer must transfer money before the livestream. All exchanges take place via the Telegram application.
... comes with many scams
However, Lao Dong's records also show that many victims were scammed by tricks of buying virtual viewers, likes, and livestream shares, which also exploded.
Mr. Dinh Minh Duc - owner of a TikTok channel with more than 100,000 followers - said that he had previously used money to buy followers on this social network. In addition to his office job at the company, Mr. Duc also hopes to increase his personal income from online sales.
However, before receiving a "storm" of orders for household appliances, Mr. Duc was scammed out of nearly 1 million VND. "I bought 1,000 TikTok followers. In addition, in the first livestream session, I bought 100 views. The price for this service is 870,000 VND. There are followers but not many orders. With the number of views, the first 5 minutes are stable, then this number drops to only about 10 views" - Mr. Duc shared.
Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Lien (Lang Son) - a mother who just gave birth and wanted to stay at home to sell online - was also a victim of this scam. Ms. Lien said that after buying 1,000 views within 1 hour for the first livestream session on TikTok channel with about 100 followers, she lost 2.5 million VND.
However, the number of views was only stable within the first 15 minutes and could not be maintained until the end of the livestream session. When Ms. Lien texted the seller, she received a request: "Do tasks to increase interaction for your own channel". "They asked me to like some TikTok channels to increase interaction with my channel. Then, they instructed me to do the task of liking videos, receiving money, receiving 3,000 views, double the number of views I initially bought. However, after losing 2.5 million VND in fees for 1,000 views, I no longer trust them" - Ms. Lien recounted.
Discussing this issue, Dr. Nguyen Nga Huyen - a journalism and communications expert at Hanoi National University - commented: Using money to buy fake views or likes on TikTok means breaking the "real" trust of social network users. When trust is gone, the numbers of likes and shares are meaningless, and there will be no more orders.
With the intervention of technology, the livestream space can be made virtual (fake) from the audio, visual to the information. And of course, virtual information can easily lead to consequences such as money fraud, love fraud. When sellers perform livestreams on TikTok, the platform's algorithm allows to check the behavior of users present in the livestream session; then, distribute to the corresponding customer file. If the seller buys virtual views, usually foreign accounts, not very active on TikTok, they will also be distributed to the wrong customer file. The sales rate is very low, even being assessed as violating, making it very difficult to get orders.
